Top Ten Facts About Candy

The Jack-O-Lanterns are extinguished. The costumes are stored away in the closet. The embarrassing photos are hopefully not on Facebook. It’s sad, but it’s true – Halloween is over. Over it may be, but there’s still loads of candy lying around, whether it’s your personal spoils of trick or treating or leftovers from the lack of costumed kiddies that knocked on your door. While you indulge in chocolate bar after gummy bear after chocolate bar, you might as well put your head to work as well as your digestive system. And so, without further ado, this week’s Top Ten, in celebration of Halloweens past, present, and future, presents to you the “Top Ten Facts About Candy!”

10. Wondering why chocolate melts in your mouth? It’s because the melting point of cocoa butter is just below 98.6 degrees, the human body temperature.
9. When they were first created, gummy bears were named “dancing bears.”
8. The Snickers bar, created in 1929, was named after the inventor’s family horse.
7. The biggest lollipop ever produced was roughly 18.9 inches thick, weighed 4,031 lbs, and measured more than 15 feet tall, stick included.
6. Kit Kats were originally introduced in the UK as “Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp.”
5. When it was first produced in 1932, Three Musketeers was a package of three pieces of candy nougat – chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.
4. William H. Luden, best known for inventing his namesake cough drops, was also the inventor of the 5th Avenue Bar.
3. Roughly 35 million pounds – about 9 billion pieces – of candy corn are produced each year. If you laid this amount of candy corn end-to-end, in would wrap around the moon nearly 21 times!
2. Younger children as less partial to chocolate than their older compatriots. Fifty-nine percent of 9-11 year-olds prefer chocolate, while only 46 percent of 6-8 year-olds call it their favorite.
1. For some odd reason, houses with black shutters are 77 percent more likely to give out Kit Kat bars to trick or treaters.